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February 26, 2015

Over a photo career dating back to Harlan County in 1974 I have always concentrated on labor, work, unions and social issues.

For years I was lucky enough to work for a number of progressive US labor unions, progressive politically and progressive in their view that the union’s publications should serve as an alternative news source to corporate media and not a PR device for leadership.

When that changed, and it did, I moved on to other clients. But my commitment to wanting, as Lewis Hine, the great social documentarian and activist of the early 20th century, “to show the thing that had to be corrected: the things that had to be appreciated” has never changed.

Over the 40 years or so that I have been doing this work my work-life situation has changed numerous times. In January of this year, no longer finding the work justifiable, I declined to continue contract work with my main client and instead have began looking for new avenues, sometimes on old roads not traveled in many years.

In that vein I will from time to time, starting with the collection here, move from behind the screen at The Stansbury Forum and post up small galleries of work and worker photos from my archive. And perhaps, some brand new material as well.

Comment on Workers

February 15, 2015

With the labor contract settled at Mass machine I was not only able to buy a brand new lime green Ford Pinto, but I got myself a couple more pairs of elastic polyester pants made popular in the 70’s disco theme movie, Saturday Night Fever. One pair I had was my pant of choice in public gatherings, parties and union meetings. It was an alternating plaid brown and black that you might see today on the legs of a cruise ship octogenarian playing shuffleboard. I’ll never forget trying to impress my aunt Amy, who had decided to visit me and see how I was doing. She came to my run down and filthy apartment on Dorchester Ave in Savin Hill . To show her that I was doing fine I proceeded to pull out my ironing board and begin to iron my polyester. I paused to talk to Amy and withdrew the iron. I had burned a huge hole in my best dress pants. The polyester clung to the face of the iron in the shape of the gaping hole.

While my automotive purchase and haberdasher decisions might be called into question, I had done enough right in the organizing campaign and contract negotiations to be selected union shop chairman at the factory. That meant I was responsible for making sure the contract was enforced and representing our small unit at UE Local 262 meetings and at UE New England District Council meetings. The action however was on the shop floor and even though we had signed an excellent labor agreement, the turmoil and battles did not cease.

OSHA, although lacking teeth then and now, is a wonderful organizing tool. The penalties are not strict enough and enforcement capacity is limited and often completely lacking but OSHA remains a wonderful organizing tool for a union that is on its toes and has the power to enforce the standards.

We certainly used it that way at MMS. The loud clacking of the metal stamping presses meant that the noise on the floor of Mass Machine was often higher than the acceptable OSHA standard of 90 decibels. We told Mass Machine that it was their responsibility to engineer that noise out of the production process.

The company at a certain point installed a buzzer system with an alarmed door and a Plexiglas window like those at all night convenience stores in a high crime neighborhood.

In April of 1974, the company hired a new Vice President for labor relations, Jim Moran who was tasked with taming the UE juggernaut. Moran approached me and told me that I would have to wear earplugs and recommend that all the press operators wear earplugs. I told him that we wanted the noise engineered out, and that earplugs were not a solution. I said that I would not wear them. He fired me on the spot for insubordination and told me to leave the factory. I passed the word to all the workers to meet in the lunchroom on the second floor to discuss the company’s actions. Just as the meeting started the Boston Police Department entered the lunchroom, called by the company to evict me from the premises. The workers decided that if I was being escorted out that they would all go out with me. The plant was shut down, and we were on the street. Within 2 hours the Company was in negotiations with Mike Eisenscher our UE Organizer and they agreed to put me back to work with no recriminations against the other members, and they would explore the engineering solution to the high decibels. So while we had a grievance procedure that provided for no strikes during the term of the contract I had quickly learned an important lesson. When production is halted and the employer has no effective means of restarting it any time soon, we had a lot of power. This was the first of many episodes of MMS workers flexing their muscles.

In June we struck again. The Company brought in two Labor Pool workers to do our work. They were paying them $2.00 per hour, $.75 below our start minimum, and no benefits. We shut down production and negotiated a $2.75 per hour rate for them for all work they had done and an agreement that the company would not try again to bring in Labor Poll workers.

During that summer of 1974 the workers at Baltimore Brush, a facility adjacent to us on the corner of Albany and Northampton Streets decided to organize into the same union, UE Local 262. Baltimore Brush employed about 65 workers and I knew the main organizer at the “Brush”, a Puerto Rican brother named Julio. As their organizing drive opened up and got more aggressive, the company responded by firing Julio. This was the pre-cell phone era so Julio came over to our lunchroom to tell us what had happened. We rounded up our members from Mass Machine, particularly the Puerto Rican brothers, and we all marched into the Executive Offices at Baltimore Brush demanding Julio’s reinstatement. Two days later he was back, and soon the workers at Baltimore Brush voted in the same union, the UE.

We had a habit of barging into executive offices, a tactic we had employed successfully on many occasions at Mass Machine. The company at a certain point installed a buzzer system with an alarmed door and a Plexiglas window like those at all night convenience stores in a high crime neighborhood.

These were pretty heady times. Young red agitators like me were anticipating big societal change and often intoxicated with our small successes. I think the most amazing moment and the one that pushed the company to a fateful decision was the Bill Buckley incident. Bill Buckley was a popular supervisor who was often supportive of our issues. One night in a Marxist study group I discussed Lenin’s “What is to Be Done” which describers the tasks of communists in a pre-revolutionary period (Guide; Study questions) . He exhorted us to be fighters not only for the interest of the working class but also for the interests of all classes in opposition to the Tsar. Taking this exhortation completely out of historical context, I headed to the factory the next day determined to implement my new understanding. The company chose to fire Bill Buckley. I chose to “fight for the interests of all classes”, and save the job of a low level supervisor, and I led a walkout to protest his firing. We were out on the street and I thought I better call the union hall and talk to our union rep, Mike Eisenscher before the company did and explain the situation. I explained what we had done and he said, “you did what????###%%^^&&! He ordered us back to work immediately.

On November 6, 1974 the company announced that they would be closing in Roxbury and moving to Nashua, New Hampshire sometime in January 1975. Nashua just happened to be outside the 30-mile radius clause (in post #11 the number was incorrectly printed as 60) we had negotiated in our new labor agreement. Nashua was 45 miles away and that meant that the contract and the union would not be going to Nashua with the company.

About the author

Peter Olney

Peter Olney is retired Organizing Director of the ILWU. He has been a labor organizer for 40 years in Massachusetts and California. He has worked for multiple unions before landing at the ILWU in 1997. For three years he was the Associate Director of the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of California. View all posts by Peter Olney →

Comment on Olney Odyssey #12 – Big Battles in a Small World

February 7, 2015

Living Peace: Connecting Your Spirituality with Your Work for Justice, by Victor Narro 2014

Living Peace, Victor Narro’s new book on the spiritual side of organizing is just over 100 pages long. His little volume is broaching a topic that might raise cynical eyebrows in certain quarters in our labor movement. His thesis intrigued me and in the spirit of self-mindedness I read the book and then reflected on my own recent experience.

On January 24th Agustin Ramirez, the gifted ILWU Northern California Lead Organizer invited my wife and me to participate in a levantamiento in Merced, California hosted by his mother and father. I had participated in “posadas” at Christmas season before, but I was ignorant of the “levantamiento” “Posadas” is a ritual whereby the community marches door to door in the neighborhood singing carols and reenacting the quest of Joseph and Mary for room at the inn, lodging or “posadas”. “Levantamiento” comes 40 days after the birth of Jesus and is also a community procession in which the baby Jesus is raised up and presented. Both these rituals are part of the Christmas season in Latin America and part of Agustin’s formation as an organizer. These are the cultural connections that enable the deep base building involved in his work in the Latino immigrant community. Merced is worlds away from the Bay Area but not from the lives of its immigrant Latino working class.

“…sustaining lifelong activism for social change requires more than clinical strategy and political exhortations”

I have had the privilege of participating with Agustin in a wonderful worker organizing campaign in the County of Alameda California over the last three years. The Campaign for Sustainable Recycling has been successful in raising the dignity and the hourly wage of the sorters who pick through garbage and waste on filthy conveyor belts in the wee hours before most residents of the Bay Area are even awake. The workers of International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and its Local 6 have succeeded in raising their hourly wages to $21.00 per hour by 2019! All this progress for a workforce that is 65% female and mostly Latina immigrants has come through a combination of worker action, strikes and stoppages coupled with political pressure in particular municipalities like San Leandro, Fremont and Oakland that set the rates for garbage pickup and recycling.

This is a “Si Se Puede” story for 300 workers against all odds. Policy makers, pundits and certain “union leaders” said it couldn’t be done. This year on March 1, the workers will celebrate three years of struggle and their achievements at an International Day of the Recycler Convention in Oakland California. March 1 was designated Dia Internacional de Los Recicladores by the Associacion de Recicladores de Bogota, Colombia. In that country last year’s March 1 was celebrated with a march of over 17,000 recyclers.

No organizing achievement of this magnitude happens solely or mainly because of clinically detached policy wonks and labor strategists figuring out leverage. There is a transcendent quality of spirituality in this powerful organizing. I was reminded of this when I attended a recent steering committee meeting of the campaign. Agustin punctuated the meeting and the history of the campaign by telling an amazing story of the life challenges of one woman at the ACI recycling facility in San Leandro.

But first a little background. The ILWU started working in 2013 with a group of recyclers at ACI. The workers there had each been bilked out of almost three dollars per hour for three years under the City of San Leandro’s living wage. Led by several Latinas the workers organized to file a lawsuit under the living wage. The company retaliated by firing workers whose immigration papers were not in order. The workers struck and protested against this retaliation. They persevered and finally organized a union with ILWU Local 6. The Teamsters who represented the higher paid garbage truck drivers acted in concert with the employer and tried to bully the workers into joining their union. The workers voted 49-9 for the ILWU, got a three dollar per hour immediate raise and settled a law suit for over $1million dollars, and are on the precipice of a first contract that will bring wages to the Alameda standard of $21 by 2019.

Ramirez told of one ACI worker, a Latina immigrant who was fired in the initial retaliation. Despite this humiliating experience and the sacrifices it imposed on her family, she has remained a loyal supporter of the lawsuit and the organizing. I can only imagine the inner strength needed to face this maze of challenges, which brings us back to Victor Narro and his fine book on connecting the spiritual to our work for justice.

Narro’s spiritual faith in a greater ‘Good” is the product of his own amazing work as a labor and community organizer in Los Angeles for thirty years and his study of the teachings of St Francis of Assisi and a Vietnamese spiritualist and teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh. Living Peace is a manifesto, skillfully written and beautifully illustrated with photographs by Narro and his life partner Laureen Lazarovici. Each chapter is introduced by a quote from St Francis. Reflection questions end each chapter and there is space for personal notes. This is meant to be a book that an organizer can take into the field as a spiritual companion.

Narro’s fine work recognizes that sustaining lifelong activism for social change requires more than clinical strategy and political exhortations. He provides a spiritual guide for organizers who are engaged for the long haul. Ramirez was reflecting on the courage of one worker in his telling of the challenges of the ACI worker, but her story is not unique. The quote that precedes the final chapter of Narro’s work could apply to many organizing situations:

“When surrounded by a thousand dangers, let us not lose heart, except to make room for one another in our hearts.”

For a copy of Living Peace contact Victor Narro at vnarro@irle.ucla.edu

About the author

Peter Olney

Peter Olney is retired Organizing Director of the ILWU. He has been a labor organizer for 40 years in Massachusetts and California. He has worked for multiple unions before landing at the ILWU in 1997. For three years he was the Associate Director of the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of California. View all posts by Peter Olney →

Comment on The Spiritual in the Struggle-Book Review

January 27, 2015

Alexis Tsipras‘ Syriza party, as expected, captured control of Greece’s government this past weekend, with a crushing victory winning 149 of the 300 seats and just missing majority control without the need to form a governing coalition. While the campaign was closely followed throughout Europe by both established politicians and financiers, as well as by leftists, in the US little attention has been paid to it, perhaps because as the cliché goes about something not understood “It’s Greek to me.” In Europe, though, his victory, hailed by counterparts like Podemos in Spain, in Portugual, and in England’s often vibrant Socialist camp the big win apparently promises to provide a surge in support for similar anti-austerity and redistribution movements.

Notably, Tsipras, accused of being an atheist (among other fear mongering) during the campaign outraged aged European political leaders by rejecting the traditional religious vows and swearing-in by the country’s Greek Orthodox Archbishop and by appearing in an open-necked shirt (he has vowed not to wear a tie until he has successfully negotiated with the “Troika” which imposed extensive privitization and savage cuts in the country’s social welfare programs. His first act as prime minister was to lay roses at a memorial to 200 Greek communists executed by the Nazis in 1944 which was interpreted both as a signal that Greece was ready to stand up to Germany’s austerity demands as well as honor the country’s left resistance.

Tsipras, whom European financiers and officials had predicted would “move to the center” after being elected, were more stunned and frightened by his forming the needed coalition not with moderate parties but with the rightwing party Independent Greeks (known as Anel) which won less than 5% of the vote. Like Syriza, Anel has demanded higher taxes on the country’s oligarchs, along with more rigorous tax collection from the rich, an end to widespread corruption, limits on moving wealth out of Greece, and a rejection of the country’s subjugation to German demands (which it has linked to the German nazi past).

Anel, meanwhile, not unlike most social right-wingers in the US, is anti-immigrant, strongly religious, anti-gay, and at times anti-Semitic. But that linkage to join in a governing majority communicated Tsipras intention to pursue his anti-austerity and redistribution principles as the dominant theme of his new government.

Standing up to Europe’s governing elite and financiers won’t be easy for Syriza. He is somewhat hemmed in by the desire of most Greeks to continue in the Euro zone. But this victory, and Tsipras’ initial moves to ignore contradictions on social policies and ideologies and coalesce with a strong anti-austerity, anti-financial group is a lesson for other countries, as it should be here in the US.

As an English friend and union activist and Socialist wrote me “Syriza and Podemos are partly offspring of the Arab revolutions in 2010 and I know that developments in Greece, where the Euro working class has been most savagely hit, will be closely watched. Wouldn’t hurt other more distant lefties to pay attention into class, now would it!”

About the author

Paul Worthman

Paul Worthman is a semi-retired negotiator, strategic and financial researcher, with numerous California unions for close to 40 years. Prior to that he was a professor of history at UCLA, Wellesley and the University of Warwick. View all posts by Paul Worthman →

Comment on It’s Greek to Me!

January 25, 2015

The workers at Mass Machine Shop had voted decisively for representation by the United Electrical Workers (UE), but as anyone knowledgeable of labor knows, that is only a small first step. Often the challenge is negotiating a first contact between the union and the company. Many companies in the 21st century treat the NLRB representation election as a minor speed bump and race ahead with their plans to undermine the choice of the workers and destroy the union. That was not the case at Mass Machine Shop in 1973 for reasons soon to be revealed.

The employer had threatened such a move in the run up to the union election. We needed protection…

The workers at Mass Machine elected their negotiating committee. Billy Foley was chosen to represent the South Boston, white Irish contingent. Julio Santos was chosen to represent the Puerto Ricans, and my Italian language drew me the assignment to represent the Italians. Our UE Organizer Michael Eisenscher was the spokesperson and chief negotiator. The company sent its Vice President Dick Theurer to the table along with the company’s outside attorney for labor relations a very tall and well-spoken man in his sixties named Alan Tepper.

Negotiations began in August of 1973 with an initial meeting during which the union presented its proposals. The proposals had been honed in several cafeteria meetings at Mass Machine and at the UE Local 262 hall at Andrew Station in South Boston. Health and safety issues had to be addressed. We demanded that the Company engineer out the high decibel noise from the clanging punch presses. We demanded that the company install guards over all the presses so that no one would ever again lose a digit in the production process. We decided that we would, in our little proletarian stronghold, emulate the mighty United Auto Workers and get Supplementary Unemployment Benefits (SUB). SUB meant that a worker who was laid off would receive the difference between unemployment benefits and their regular take home pay supplemented by the company. We were very attuned to the danger of production being closed down in Roxbury and moved elsewhere to evade the union and its contract. The employer had threatened such a move in the run up to the union election. We needed protection so we proposed a 30-mile radius clause that would insure any move within that distance would carry it with the responsibility on the part of the employer to keep the workforce and the contract. And of course we wanted a healthy pay raise.

Negotiations began in the steamy humidity of Boston summer. The company, prior to being union, had a loose heat day policy whereby if the temperature exceeded 90 degrees they let workers go home with pay. They relied on giant fans to keep the temperature just under 90, and no one could remember ever having benefited from this policy. That summer we decided to test the policy. The temperature was in the high 80’s around 11 AM and I started to monitor the temperature and called it to the attention of Pat Caizzi, the production supervisor. The thermometer that would control was next to the time clock in the punch out area. At 11:30 the workers in the tool and die shop that abutted the time clock began to stoke up all their ovens that were used to harden their dies. That drove the temperature over 90! I called Pat to the thermometer, and he reluctantly rang the break and lunch buzzer, and we all lined up and began punching out. As the last worker happily punched out heading home with 4 hours of “heat day” pay, Pat looked at the thermometer and saw that the temperature had slipped back under 90! It was too late, we were free and we subsequently incorporated that “heat day” language into the collective bargaining agreement that was settled in September.

I went out and bought myself a new car, a lime colored Ford Pinto with rack and pinion steering. I probably should have paid less attention to the hype in the auto showroom…

I thought that a combination of the ingenuity of our negotiator and the solid support of the workers led to a very fine first contract, in fact a model agreement. We got the Supplementary Unemployment Benefits, the runaway shop proviso of 30 miles and the heat day language, which I have never seen in any labor agreement since. And we got all of this and a dollar an hour raise immediately which in those days on a base of $3.25 was a whopping 30%. I went out and bought myself a new car, a lime colored Ford Pinto with rack and pinion steering. I probably should have paid less attention to the hype in the auto showroom and more to Ralph Nader. I had bought a lemon with an exploding gas tank!

All of these gains were made in record time. From vote to first contract took a matter of months. I have since negotiated first contracts that took years. Being young and a labor novitiate I liked to think that the contents of the agreement were the product of our bold organizing. Certainly the early seventies were not the height of employer aggression and resistance to unions. We would see that in full flower at the end of the seventies and into the 80’s with Reagan’s firing of the air traffic controllers in 1981. But it was a few years later after I had left Mass Machine that I figured out another factor that weighed on the negotiations, the company’s attorney Alan Tepper.

In 1979 I went to work at Boston City Hospital (BCH) right up the street from Mass Machine as an elevator operator. I had my license from NECCO, which enabled me to get on in the elevator department (More on the job at BCH in future installments of OO). One evening I was operating the elevator in the surgical building, Dowling Hall, carrying visitors up to the post op wards. Onto my elevator stepped Alan Tepper. I introduced myself to him and he said he remembered me from the negotiations at Mass Machine. How could he not remember my banging the table and giving militant agitational speeches that he would tolerate with a patient grin? He asked how I was doing and said he enjoyed our negotiations 6 years ago. We shook hands and he departed my elevator. I got curious and I decided to figure out whom this Alan Tepper was. Turns out he was a very progressive Boston attorney who made his living in labor negotiations, but during the height of the McCarthy period in Boston he had defended communists from prosecution. I think in retrospect he found me kind of amusing and probably appreciated the history of the Left wing UE.

Most management side labor attorneys counsel their clients to resist all the union’s “outlandish” demands so as to prolong their usefulness and their fees. Alan Tepper seems to have counseled a quick settlement with some contract language that unbeknownst to his client was more appropriate for a giant auto factory with a bargaining relationship of 40 years and several agreements. Tepper did accede to the 30-mile radius language for runaway production. We held that up as a great victory for the workers. Less than a year later we would find out what MMS had in store for us and that there may have been method to attorney Tepper’s “generosity”!

About the author

Peter Olney

Peter Olney is retired Organizing Director of the ILWU. He has been a labor organizer for 40 years in Massachusetts and California. He has worked for multiple unions before landing at the ILWU in 1997. For three years he was the Associate Director of the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of California. View all posts by Peter Olney →

Comment on OO #11 – First Contract at MMS

January 12, 2015

The henna tattoos are fading from my hands but the enchanting memories of my recent trip to India are not. The blurring henna is a reminder that I spent seven days in the exotic state of Rajasthan, and the city of Udaipur, the “Venice of the East” as it is known in India. Family and friends had gathered to celebrate the “love marriage” with all the ceremony of a traditional “arranged marriage” of our young friends from “the East,” the bride from Mumbai, India and the groom from Boston, Mass.

There were many unforgettable moments. The groom travelled by elephant, a traditional custom, with both families as his entourage to greet his bride. The bride was lovely and stunning four days in a row as she greeted her blushing groom. Also, there were the larger than life palatial venues such as the City Palace, a fusion of Rajasthani and Mughal architectural styles where the Sangeet event, traditionally the bachelorette party was transformed into an international talent show. In contrast to the epic wedding there were local village scenes that were so mind-twisting I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. These were visual images that at first glance didn’t make sense. Images so raw they moved my heart and awakened my soul.

These were the women who lived and worked in and around the Pichola Lake Village. Draped in a neon colored or print patterned sari unique as every woman was elegant and beautiful. The fluorescent hues were as stunning as the dark side of women’s forecasted future was bleak in this male-dominated society.

Not once in the seven days did I see the same sari or combination of sari fabric worn. It was as though each sari was created for each of the 600 million plus women on the sub-continent, including women performing hard physical labor. Yes! Women toiling at work digging ditches waist deep, laying bricks, or maintaining streets were wearing beautiful saris. Eye-popping fluorescent greens, yellows, oranges, reds blues and hues of every shade. And different combinations of fabric, such as silk, chiffons, cottons, crepe georgette and bold prints gave new meaning to “brilliant” and “style”.

While I felt sheer terror thinking that I was going to die riding in an auto-rickshaw, it became apparent how relatively “safe” I was compared to the women working in the streets. As they worked in the trenches, there were no orange cones to alert the chaotic traffic that there were WORKERS AHEAD! It was easy to imagine women being maimed or accidently strangled by flowing cloth. Work, women’s work, dignified work; women laboring and thriving in beautiful saris.

When asked why women wear saris when doing hard physical labor, a young woman retail worker said that it is customary to wear them no matter what a woman’s occupation. In the same conversation she mentioned that wearing the sari was not without controversy. When worn traditionally, a portion of the woman’s midriff flesh is typically exposed thus potentially inviting male sexual advances. In addition, desirable or not, the 6-9 meters of fabric could become a hazardous liability even “life threatening” in a tangled domestic dispute. In a society where the mortality rate for young girls 1-5 years old is 75% higher than young boys- how much more dangerous can a sari be?

Having been instructed on how to wear my own sari, I could relate to it fitting as tight as a lover’s hold. Elegance notwithstanding, its tightness can be stifling, cumbersome and somewhat oppressive! The sari wraps over and around a fitted waist-to-floor petticoat that matches its color. In addition, there is a choli, a tightly fitted short blouse worn under the sari that dates back to the 10th Century. The sari colors, prints and degree of rhinestone dazzle are a matter of the taste and desire of the buyer. Last but not least are the many safety pins. These magically hold the yards of pleated fabric strategically together with the effect being the ultimate in grace and dignity.

The little time I wore the sari and watching women manage them taught me how attentive one must be, especially newbies. My anxiety prompted a nightmare in which I dreamt my sari did unravel like a spinning top with the first misstep while dancing. Imagine my surprise when a party sofa collapsed underneath me the very next night. Later when my Son told me I had landed as gently as the sinking Titanic, I was secretly pleased I hadn’t worn my sari that night!

However, the most unforgettable memory was the visual contrast of luxury inside the palace hotel compared to the squalor and poverty outside the hotel walls. I imagined this is the type of contrast that Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha from the 5th or 6th century BC must have seen when he ventured outside his palace walls. Siddhartha was a young prince, forbidden by his nobleman father to go outside the family’s palace, ever. As might be expected this unreasonable demand fed his natural curiosity even as a young child and he eventually rebelled and secretly leaves. What he discovers is disturbing, confusing, and exciting. He is witness to suffering heretofore unknown to him, and chaos, or is it chaos? Profoundly moved by what he sees, feels, whom he meets and what he learns Siddhartha renounces his birthright and begins his spiritual journey of self-discovery.

As we journeyed into the Pichola Lake Village in the “Tuk Tuk” (auto-rickshaw) for the first time, the comparisons between the palace hotel and shanty dwellings were obvious- The Third World abutting The First World.

The contrasts in India are like that, starkly black and white with opulence up close to devastating poverty, sleeping side-by-side, dependent on each other, and their unequal embrace. Inside our pristine palace hotel were Olympic pools, a luxury spa staffed by cheap labor from Bhutan, doting staff, abundant Indian cuisine, and sprawling manicured grounds. Outside there were cows and bulls eating from heaps of foul smelling trash dumped on the side of the road as dogs lay sunbathing on the same fly-ridden waste. Mounds of plastic-riddled trash were being burned within feet of huts, shanty’s, open-air markets, and pedestrians without apparent concern for citizens being exposed to the toxic smoke and gases. There was human and animal waste on the streets and the water was rarely potable. Drivers were shooing begging children away from our Tuk Tuk . These were children whose vacant eyes, bare and swollen feet, and open palms betrayed their caste and fate in life.

Outside the palace hotel was a breathtaking and totally sensual experience, inexplicably alive and resilient yet juxtaposed with the sobering realization that the crushing disparities between the haves and have-nots are very much alive in India.

About the author

Christina Perez

Christina is a wife, mom, daughter, sister, tia, friend, marathon runner, dancer, keeper of secrets, public servant and more. She has written numerous short stories, songs, poems and missives for herself, for friends, for decades, for fun, for coping and for love. Words, thoughts, moments, in writing- all a mystery to be explored. View all posts by Christina Perez →

About the author

E. Elena Songster

E. Elena Songster is Assistant Professor of History at Saint Mary's College of California. Her field of research is modern Chinese history and environmental history and she teaches courses on world history and the history of Asia. She is a former resident of Kirkwood, MO, another suburb of St. Louis. View all posts by E. Elena Songster →

November 20, 2014

Who asks somebody, “What did you learn at work today? “We of course ask our children, “What did you learn in school today?” We ask our spouse, “How did it go at work today?” or “Did you get through work without too much stress and strain? What did your idiot boss do today?” but never “What did you learn at work today? “Veteran labor educator Helena Worthen has written a book with a catchy title that betrays a profound theme. She is a representative of a committed cadre of labor educators who believe they have more to learn from the lives and experiences of labor than they have to teach in a didactic classroom setting. Miles Horton, the founder of the Highlander Center in Tennessee, is perhaps the tradition’s most notable practitioner. His school spawned two generations of leaders and activists; the CIO labor organizers of the 30’s and the civil rights activists of the 50’s and 60’s like Rosa Parks, a Highlander Center trainee.

The educator/organizer

This tradition places a premium on understanding and helping workers themselves process their experiences in work and in struggle. The educator/organizer is a facilitator not a didactic or mobilizer. He or she is the teacher who helps workers reflect on their own experience and gain confidence to confront an employer class that wields arrogant and capricious power over their very work lives. These are skills that come with years and years of deep interaction with thousands of workers struggling to win a shred of dignity while earning an income. These are the skills that are essential to any rebirth of the labor movement. We need armies of apostles who believe in the importance of this kind of action oriented popular education that Worthen so aptly describes.

Four theories

Worthen presents four theories of learning to help give a framework for examining some very compelling case studies. Kolb’s learning cycle, Communities of Practice, Work process theory and Activity Theory are all dynamic models that provide framework to labor educators and organizers. Worthen counter poses her four theories to “Tarzan” theory which posits that all learning is an individual responsibility and based on will power and attitude not the broader social and class context that conditions knowledge acquisition and power. In contrast, Worthen says that the “four theories that I like say that learning happens through social interaction, through discussion, trial and error, the power of community, the creation or destruction of tools, conflict and new history, and that power matters. None of the theories that I have presented have anything to do with trying hard or being intellectually gifted.” Enough said!

Social practice

“What did you learn?” goes on to illustrate these theories with some very rich social practice brought to life with extensive quotes from worker combatants. Workers in downstate Illinois organize a social service agency with a two-year election fight, strike and lockout; “I learned so much about my town and the people in it. I wouldn’t trade the experience I gained in public speaking or the friends I made. It was sure a learning period in my life and I am grateful for it.” Children of public sector union members in AFSCME write college scholarship essays about what their parent’s union has meant for them and the lives of their families: “I went to the rally that my mother wanted me to go to, and it turned out she was up on the platform speaking, I was so proud of her I started to cry”.

Union apprenticeships as “shared learning”

Chapter 9 paints a poignant picture of the learning differences between a job-training program and a union building trades apprenticeship. As I discovered when my son Nelson sought to become a union electrician, “Applying to a formal apprenticeship program is as complicated as applying to college. Some are as selective as the Ivy League.” The rewards of entry are immense because union apprentices get paid well while working and are required to attend school to consolidate the lessons learned on the job. The union is invested in the success of the apprentice because of the investment in training. One of Worthen’s interviewees stated, “They want you to stay healthy so you can work a long time. When I worked non-union they didn’t give a crap about you. Your body would be dead at the end of the day.” Worthen distinguishes union apprenticeship where there is a community of practice and shared learning with the non-union apprenticeship programs like the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) that operate in typical school based learning fashion where individual competition and grades are used to select who gets employment.

Fundamentals

One can argue with Worthen’s application of particular theories to the learning process, but what is so rich about this volume is that it stimulates a discussion of the fundamentals of organizing. I have often argued with university based labor centers that they need to put aside their perpetual strategic organizing workshops that explore corporate research, corporate leverage and communications but have no curriculum that teaches and explores the basics of worker organizing. Corporate research and corporate leverage are the easy stuff. Any of the massive crop of Ivy League activists can do that! They were trained to be masters of the universe and those skills are part of their training. Nothing and nobody prepared them for the hard job of winning the hearts and minds of workers, growing leaders and helping them get the courage to engage in struggle in their workplace. These “forbidden lessons of labor education” need not be forbidden to community and labor organizers. For those who believe organizing is more than Facebook hits or twitter feeds this is a must read. I am gifting it to all my colleague field organizers at the ILWU. Solidarity Forever.

About the author

Peter Olney

Peter Olney is retired Organizing Director of the ILWU. He has been a labor organizer for 40 years in Massachusetts and California. He has worked for multiple unions before landing at the ILWU in 1997. For three years he was the Associate Director of the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of California. View all posts by Peter Olney →

Comment on Reviewed: “What did you learn at work today?” The Forbidden Lessons of Labor Education” by Helena Worthen

November 16, 2014

Mass Machine was a classic “hot shop”. In labor parlance “hot shop’ indicates a workplace where the issues and the anger is such that the workers want change and the task of the organizer is to give voice, understanding and organization to that “heat” so that the workers can form a union. It took a worker losing a digit under a repeating punch press to spark the heat, but the dissatisfaction with the wages and the abusive treatment of supervisors were longstanding. Mass Machine (MM) was not a big shop, 60 total workers in tool and die, maintenance, production, shipping and receiving and the sweeper, all working one shift. Unlike workplaces with hundreds of workers, multiple shifts, buildings and departments, MM was very manageable for four organizers!

That did not mean that the challenges of language, race, fear and uncertainty were not there. In some ways the 60-person shop was a good learning microcosm for young and inexperienced organizers like my comrades and me. The winning formula was simple: unite the Italians and Puerto Ricans and split the white ethnics, mostly Irish American. The Puerto Ricans were very united and their leader was Luis Collazo, who had been in the USA for a while and was from Ponce, PR. He sported what we used to call a classic D.A. (Duck’s Ass) haircut enriched with shiny gel. He was respected as a high production worker and commanded the loyalty of his Boricua brothers.

The Italians and Puerto Ricans generally had a playful relationship somewhat based on the fact that their languages were very similar. I worked side by side with Miguel Santos, a young Puerto Rican also Ponceno. Miguel spoke no English and I spoke no Spanish at that time. He spoke to me in a considerably decelerated Spanish and I responded in my Italian standard. We did fine. I can’t say I did as well initially with the Italians. They all spoke either Beneventino or Avellinese, the dialects from their cities and villages out side of Naples. That was a foreign language for me, far more foreign than Puerto Rican Spanish. But Sabado, a younger worker from Benevento, who spoke Italian standard and Neapolitan dialect, became a friend, and he was able to galvanize the Italians. He even wrote a flyer in Italian ripping the company’s disrespectful treatment of workers: “Per quanto tempo ci facciamo essere trattati come bestie, che sono chiamate alle 7:00 e rilasciate a pastoreggiare alle 4:30″ (how long are we going to allow ourselves to be treated like beasts of burden called to work at 7 and then let out pasture at 4:30). I think the pastoral metaphor resonated well with the Italian cohort.

In the run up to the election in late June we used a lot of flyers. Our newsletter was called the Workers Voice of MMS or La Voce Operaia di MMS. At this time there was no Voz Obrera en Espanol because nobody in our team spoke Spanish. But the Puerto Rican workers told me not to worry that they were doing fine with the Italian and kind of enjoyed it. Later we published full-page newsletters in all three languages with detail on the major happenings in the facility. The workers looked forward to the newsletters and especially the famous Fred Wright UE cartoons (here, here and here). The newsletters were probably overkill in a factory of 60 workers because there is no paper substitute for face-to-face conversation in organizing. We organized in the grungy bar on Northampton Street; that’s where a lot of the most senior workers, mostly Irish American hung out. The Italians had me over to Sabado’s house for an evening discussion prior to the election at their home in Hyde Park. Meetings away from work with the Puerto Ricans were held at Lechoneria Los Reyes under the Orange Line elevated at the Egleston stop.

Election day came for the UE Union on June 28, 1973. A National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election day and the vote count is one of the most cathartic rituals in American working life. Casting aside the obstacle course of company threats and promises leading up to the election, the actual election ritual itself is chock full of emotion and pathos regardless who wins.

Each side chooses an observer to witness the actual balloting. The Company chooses a worker from the proposed bargaining unit. If the company chooses someone that the Union has been counting on as a union supporter let alone a core organizing committee member that is an ominous sign. At Mass Machine, the company chose a trusted “company man” who we had not seen as a supporter. I was chosen to be the UE observer because of my relationship to the Italians who were considered the swing vote. The observer is charged with challenging any voter who they believe is not eligible to vote. Often the Company will mobilize laid off workers or supervisors to vote. In the case of Mass Machine the workforce was so small that there was not much room for chicanery.

The observer is not supposed to speak to voters so I was focused on body language and making eye contact as a way to divine the votes. One of the older Italian workers who I was friendly with received his ballot and as he faced me on the way to the voting booth erupted in to a full-bore Fascist salute ala Mussolini. I took that as a good omen!

The vote count is excruciating no matter how many times you experience it in workforces large and small. In the case of Mass Machine the voting took less than one half hour and then everyone gathered in the company lunchroom for the count. The owner, David Knights was there with his attorney Alan Tepper and several other management personnel including Pat Caizzi, the Italian American floor boss. Our UE organizer, Michael Eisenscher and almost all the workers were in the room. The NLRB government agent dumps the ballots on the table and sorts the Yes and the No ballots. Then the agent holds up each ballot and calls out Yes or No. As the count proceeds everyone is waiting for one side or another to get to the majority of the votes cast. Once that number is exceeded the winning side erupts in often joyous screaming and cheering. At MMS most of the workers broke into cheers and David Knights cast an angry glance at Pat Caizzi and left the room in a hurry. We celebrated in the lunchroom and quickly moved to the bar on Northampton for drinks all around.

We had won the vote 39-20. I later learned from poor Pat Caizzi that he had told the owner that he had the Italians by the “coglioni” and that they would vote as he told them to. The Italians voted en masse for the union, and we had our victory. Caizzi admitted to me later that he was happy that the Union had come in. It made his job a lot easier and he got a pay raise.

Next Organizing in the heat of Boston August for a First Contract at Mass Machine.

About the author

Peter Olney

Peter Olney is retired Organizing Director of the ILWU. He has been a labor organizer for 40 years in Massachusetts and California. He has worked for multiple unions before landing at the ILWU in 1997. For three years he was the Associate Director of the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of California. View all posts by Peter Olney →

Comment on OO#10 Unionizing Mass Machine

November 9, 2014

RICHMOND, CA.
Election day, 2014, was not ending well for Nat Bates, a mayoral candidate in this largely non-white city of 100,000 long dominated by Chevron. The small crowd of supporters gathered in his storefront campaign headquarters on Macdonald Avenue was beginning to look rather glum. The big box cake, with white icing and lettering proclaiming Bates to be “Our Mayor,” remained unwrapped.

The 83-year old African-American Democrat, who has been Big Oil’s best friend on the city council, had every reason to expect early returns much better than the numbers his campaign manager was posting on the wall by 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday evening.

For many weeks, Richmond voters have been bombarded with full-color brochures touting Bates’ four decades of business friendly leadership. His final mailer listed more than fifty local ministers as campaign supporters. They were joined by U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, Contra Costa County Building Trades leaders, Richmond police and firefighters’ unions, and the Chamber of Commerce.

Nat Bates gazed down on the citizenry from countless billboards, like a ubiquitous successor to “Big Brother” in George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984. His ads popped up on the inter-net, on local TV and radio stations; large numbers of Richmond voters got YouTube videos featuring his homilies. On election day, the Bates campaign—or Moving Forward, Chevron’s PAC– deployed paid canvassers and sign-holders, plus free rides to the polls. An impressive number of Richmond residents sported “Bates for Mayor” signs on their lawn.

Most helpful of all, Moving Forward spent much of its $3.1 million budget attacking candidates fielded by the 10-year old Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA). (For details on Big Oil’s carpet-bombing of the electorate with green-and red-baiting mailers) Banding together as “Team Richmond,” termed-out Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, Vice-Mayor Jovanka Beckles, and Planning Commissioner Eduardo Martinez urged voters to create a stronger progressive majority in city government by electing their slate, Tom Butt for mayor, and Jael Myrick to a fourth open council seat. RPA refuses to accept any donations from business, large or small. While frequently allied with RPA members on key council issues, like making Chevron’s Richmond refinery safer, Butt and Myrick have yet to take that pledge.

A Richmond Rattlesnake

The scale of Chevron’s spending–to defeat low-budget municipal candidates–was so jaw-dropping that it drew national media attention. From Bay Area newspapers and The L.A. Times to Bill Moyers and Rachel Maddow and a visiting U.S. Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, everyone agreed that Richmond was ground zero for corporate-funded negative campaigning in the post-Citizens United era. Maddow, among others, feared that Big Oil’s unrestricted spending here would be “crude but effective.”

Meanwhile, as they have done in previous election cycles, friends of Nat Bates in the Black American Political Action Committee (BAPAC), the Richmond Business PAC, and a group called Black Men and Women (BMW) joined the hit-piece pile-on, in more low profile fashion. One of their mailers derided the RPA slate, Butt, and Myrick as the “Richmond Plantation Alliance”—even though 3 of the 5 candidates so described are black and/or Latino. BAPAC urged voters to elect the “independent thinkers” financed by Chevron instead.

This same pro-Bates coalition sent out a brochure, with a coiled and hissing snake on the cover; it warned Richmond voters to “Beware of this Arkansas Rattlesnake” (aka the Arkansas-born Butt). Pre-election website postings by BAPAC strongly implied that Butt, a local architect and Vietnam veteran, was a white racist who cares little about poor people and only looks out for himself and “his elitist, wealthy friends”

By October 30, Butt’s mainly small donors had raised about $60,000 for him. Even with an additional $25,000 in local public matching funds, his total campaign spending will be one-thirtieth of what Chevron spent on Bates & Co. Chevron’s failed investment in re-taking city hall works out to about $72 per registered voter–and far more if actual turn-out is calculated instead. Either way, that’s a drop in the bucket for a global company with $21 billion in profits last year. As for having “wealthy, elitist friends,” I bet that Chevron CEO John Watson, a Richmond native but current resident of San Ramon, counts far more in his social circle than Tom Butt because Watson’s total compensation was $24 million last year.

A Martyr Like Malcolm?

By 11 pm on election night, neither Bates nor Corky Booze, Nat’s city council ally, were pleased with the way things were trending. They each faced humiliating defeat, by growing margins, in their respective races with Butt and Myrick. With half of Richmond’s precincts reporting, other council candidates backed by Big Oil or real estate interest groups were also losing to “Team Richmond.” As the mounting vote totals for RPA members McLaughlin, Beckles, and Martinez were announced, there were audible groans, gasps of dismay, or cries of “Oh my God.”

A man in a football jersey insisted that “it’s just half time–we’re going to come on back in the third quarter.” With his friend Nat slumped wearily in a chair a few feet away, looking deflated in the harsh florescent lighting of the storefront, Booze didn’t foresee any second half rally by Team Bates. Instead, Corky began spin-doctoring about the RPA’s unexpected success. “I truly believe that the amount of money Chevron spent made them beneficiaries of a sympathy vote, “ the Richmond junkyard owner told me. “Chevron did not play this game right. When you attack people, they get a sympathy vote.”

Coming from someone much criticized for his own disruptive bullying, city council filibustering, homophonic hectoring, and general hostility toward female colleagues, Corky’s post-election reflections were long on self-pity and short on personal insight. “They made me the bad guy—this big black man attacking the little white lady,” Corky complained. “Gayle [McLaughlin] acts like the little old lady next door no matter how mean she is.”

Booze did credit the RPA with a strong ground campaign, if one over-reliant on volunteers he claimed were imported from Berkeley and Oakland. “The progressive group started campaigning a year and a half ago,” he noted. “The RPA was very serious…they played very dirty with me and Nat. They had 8 or 9 people at every polling place, handing out slate cards, with a special emphasis on people who couldn’t speak English.” According to Corky, the net result is that Richmond “has turned into Berkeley 100%.”

As the gloom deepened at Bates headquarters, Corky ratcheted up his martyrdom routine. “There’s no place for a guy like me because I’m too outspoken,” he lamented. “You won’t know what I’ve done for this city until I’m gone…I kind of feel like Malcolm X. No one will realize what I’ve done until I’m killed off.”

Not long afterwards, Bates himself gave a slightly more graceful concession speech. He nevertheless managed to imply that, because of low African-American voter turnout on Tuesday, his own community had let him down. In the meantime, Booze was expressing his personal sympathy for Bates, who will now be serving out the remainder of his four-year council term as a lone voice for Big Oil. “I feel sorry for Nat. This is his last go-round and he is going to be miserable. They’re going to destroy him and I don’t think he deserves that. Just remember, Tom Butt is a very vindictive guy.”

A Bash In The Baltic

At Butt’s post-election bash, there was little speechifying but the mood was much more celebratory. The news there was, of course, good, not bad. About 1:30 in the morning, available totals showed Butt winning with 51% of 11,000 ballots counted. Bates was running second with 35%. And, a third mayoral candidate, Uche Justin Uwahemu got nearly 13%–although he did not tip the election to Butt by “dividing the black vote”–as local critics of Black Women Organized for Political Action claimed after BWOPA endorsed the lawyer, management consultant, and immigrant from Nigeria, rather than Nat.

As BWOPA president Kathleen Sullivan told me earlier in the day, at a polling place where she was stumping for Uwahemu, “I’m so tired of people trying to run the race card all the time. Folks in Richmond just want something different.” (For final totals in this and other Richmond races)

Tom Butt’s victory party was held in the Point Richmond section of the city, which is the new mayor’s home turf. There under the low ceilings of a century old tavern known as The Baltic, the usually laconic Butt was having the last laugh—and dance—with the help of a catchy tune concocted by several musical friends. Entitled “The Arkansas Rattlesnake,” this campaign song cleverly embraced BAPAC’s negative branding, added a driving snare drum beat, and vocals punctuated by exuberant “hee-haws.”

The Butt campaign’s hillbilly ditty lampoons Bates for having “so much oil on him, he can get through every doorway in town.” As friends, neighbors, and volunteers for Butt began to drift out after midnight, the song’s musical refrain was still booming throughout the dimly-lit bar:

“I am ‘The Arkansas Rattlesnake,’ living in your town.
I’m just trying to stop Chevron from burning the whole place down.
I am ‘The Arkansas Rattlesnake,’ doing the best I can, trying to help the folks in Richmond get over that Nate Bates man.
I am ‘The Arkansas Rattlesnake,’ crawling on the ground cause those folks from Chevron are trying to put me down.
I know the good folks of our city won’t let that deal go down.
You got ‘The Arkansas Rattlesnake,’ you got the best around!”

In an email message to supporters on Wednesday morning, Butt professed to be “genuinely surprised” at his victory He noted that he trailed Bates by nearly 2,000 votes when both sought re-election on the city council two years ago—and the RPA lost its bid for two council seats. Butt credited this year’s success to a collaborative effort with the RPA that mobilized “voters turned off by Chevron, impressed with the remarkable progress Richmond has made in recent years, and tired of City Council meeting disruptions” aimed at discrediting that body’s now expanded and reinvigorated progressive majority.

About the author

Steve Early

Steve Early is a member of the Richmond Progressive Alliance and a supporter of Tom Butt for mayor of Richmond. He is the author of Save Our Unions: Dispatches From A Movement in Distress and other books. Early is currently working on a book about political change and public policy controversies in Richmond. He can be reached at Lsuport@aol.com. For more on his writing about labor and politics, see: www.steveearly.org View all posts by Steve Early →

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